The King's Consort, Robert King - Vivaldi: Concerti con molti istromenti (1998)

Five of the seven works featured on this recording belong to a kind of concerto that scholars of all nationa¬lities tend to call, for want of a better alternative, the ‘concerto con molti istromenti’ (literally, ‘concerto with several instruments’). The description is Vivaldi’s own and appears as a heading in two of his manuscripts (one of them that of RV555). It corresponds exactly, in translation, to the expression ‘concerts avec plusieurs instruments’ used by Bach for his six Brandenburg Concertos. ‘Molti’ and ‘plusieurs’ refer less to the total number of instruments employed—one could, after all, perform conventional solo concertos with heavily doubled orchestral parts, so increasing the number of instruments without limit—than to their variety. Vivaldi, like Bach, revels in contrast, in the combination or juxtaposition of rare, or rarely associated, instruments.
‘Concerti con molti istromenti’ were very unusual in Italy, much more common in Germany. The main reason for their rarity south of the Alps must have been the relative paucity of wind instruments (whose presence is normal in such concertos). Exceptionally among his Italian contemporaries, Vivaldi wrote them in considerable quantity: about thirty survive. The need to produce them probably occurred irregularly, in connection with special events. Most of the concertos can be associated with one of four venues or types of event.